


You don't love me at all

by camellia



Category: Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-02-03 02:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1727045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camellia/pseuds/camellia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick never seemed to notice his owl-shaped shadow. No, the boy was excellent--he definitely noticed. He just didn’t care. And that burned Owlman deeply. </p><p>Takes place a few months after Nightwing #30.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You don't love me at all

**Author's Note:**

> Utter silliness, borderline crack. Title is from "You're So Damn Hot" by Ok Go, which is what I imagine Owlman sings to himself at night while he watches Dick sleep.

Owlman didn’t always wear two inches of nanometric steel armor and four pounds of titanium alloy wings. Especially not since he had started monitoring Talon-- _Dick Grayson_ , he reminded himself. This universe’s Dick Grayson wasn’t Talon and never would be. Owlman had learned that Dick had taken up with Spyral, an international spy organization that seemed to be the invisible hand behind an impressive swath of sociopolitical events. But Owlman didn’t give a damn about lingering American operations in the Middle East or fomenting dissent in former Soviet republics. He just wanted Talon at his side again. With Dick operating day and night, and oftentimes in sweaty, exotic locales, Owlman had regretfully ditched his high-tech armor to avoid heat stroke. To his chagrin, he’d even taken to wearing civilian clothes at times. Dick never seemed to notice his owl-shaped shadow. No, the boy was excellent--he definitely noticed. He just didn’t care. And that burned Owlman deeply.

 

“You can come out, Thomas,” Dick finally said one warm September evening in Taipei. Owlman had been trailing him for two months now, and this was the first time that his presence had been acknowledged. He stepped confidently from the shadows of Dick’s swanky room at The Grand Hotel.

 

“You’re lucky I haven’t filed a restraining order,” Dick said, diligently rubbing scar cream into his torso. “It’s kind of weird when you watch me sleep.”

 

Thomas scowled. He was not _weird_. “Well why haven’t you, Richard?”

 

“You haven’t done anything else,” Dick said, peering up at him. “You’re there, but you don’t _do_ anything. And I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. What do you want?”

 

“I told you,” Thomas grunted. “I want to us to be a team again.”

 

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Dick said, “I’m kind of a one-man show these days. And completely off the grid, too. I don’t think my boss would be thrilled to have you.” _Bosses_ , he thought, _Spyral and Bruce_. “In fact, the only reason I haven’t thrown you off completely is because I’m letting you do this … thing, Thomas.” That had been an awkward conversation with Helena, Dick shuddered silently. But she had seemed to grasp the concept of a creepy uncle from an alternate universe.

 

“I will wait,” Thomas said gruffly, "But not for long." He jumped from the balcony and into the darkness, heading for the continent. There was a gang in Fujian that he could vent his frustrations on tonight.

 

~

 

After a whirlwind few months in Hong Kong, Manila, and Frankfurt, Owlman was relieved to find Dick heading back to familiar territory--Gotham.

 

He traced Dick all the way to what was undoubtedly one of Bruce Wayne’s penthouses. Though the windows were completely blacked out, his goggles allowed him to see through the skylight. On the couch was a leggy female in a loose sapphire dress with a waterfall of wavy black hair, though Owlman knew from experience that it was another one of Dick’s disguises. He lounged on the cream leather sofa with a glass of sparkling water, idly flipping through an issue of Cosmopolitan. Bruce joined him a minute later. He seemed, surprisingly, unfazed by the get-up.

 

“No thanksgiving dinner?” Dick said, his voice pitched high.

 

“Tim and Stephanie are in Boston with his grandparents,” Bruce said abruptly. “Jason’s on … Mars. I think. Alfred’s been on holiday in Nice for the past week.”

 

“If you’d invited them, they would’ve come,” Dick said, frowning.

 

Bruce shot him an inquiring look. _Does Spyral know you’re here?_ Sometimes, they didn’t need words to talk.

 

Dick shook his head slightly, then made some nondescript gesture that even Owlman didn’t catch. It was their sign for _look up_ that they’d developed long ago.

 

“What’s he doing here?” Bruce snarled.

 

Thomas figured that he might as well make an entrance. He alighted next to the sofa without a sound, as if he’d simply walked through the roof.

 

“I’ve been watching over him,” Thomas said, holding his ground. He and Bruce were nearly the same height, and they could have looked identical if not for the impressive suntan Thomas had acquired over the past few months.

 

“He’s been _stalking_ you?” Bruce grunted at Dick. “And you didn’t _tell_ me?”

 

“I am not stalking,” Thomas said sternly. “I’m waiting. We will be partners again, Richard.”

 

“Still not on the market,” Dick said, half-reading a Cosmo article ("then submerge your head--face up!--in water as he takes you from behind"). “And Bruce, if I told you, what could you have done?” Dick was sure that Bruce would realize, if he hadn’t already, that it was much better for Owlman to creep on Dick than to seek out Ultraman and Superwoman again.

 

“Hn,” Bruce agreed. _I suppose this is safer than Crime Syndicate v2.0_ , he thought.

 

“Hey, you’re brothers,” Dick said, smiling cheekily. “Maybe you could hire him for Batman, Incorporated instead. I hear he really did a number on the Snakeheads in Fujian.”

 

“Hn,” Bruce said again. “We’ll talk,” he acceded.

 

Dick looked at the clock. “I’ve got a table for three at Michelangelo in thirty minutes,” he said. “Thanksgiving, and all that,” he added hastily.

 

Bruce groaned, though he was secretly pleased. With Dick--not with this ... interloper. “You planned this, didn’t you,” he grunted. 

 

“Stop grumbling and get in the elevator. Both of you,” Dick said, straightening his dress.

 

~

 

Paul flicked an invisible speck of lint from his suit. He hated waiting tables on Thanksgiving and missing Ma’s mouth-watering turkey, but Michelangelo paid big bucks for working holidays. Plus, his sister was dragging everyone out for Black Friday shopping anyway. He was glad to miss _that_.

 

His first table of the night was none other than Bruce Wayne himself, accompanied by his current plaything and another suit whom Paul didn't recognize. The girl was hot--really hot. She had a nice smile too, and surprisingly didn’t ignore him like the other guests did. Paul spilled a little water on the table when refilling her glass, and she waved it off with a kind laugh like it was nothing. Meanwhile, Wayne ground his teeth and the other guy looked like he was out for murder. Paul couldn't help but steal glances of the girl throughout dinner. Shame she was with a playboy like Wayne. And whoever the other guy was, he was plain creepy. Stared at the girl like she was a piece of meat. The three of them probably had an arrangement--Paul knew how depraved high society could be. He wasn’t supposed to blab about guests, but he was totally telling his sister later--she thought Wayne was pure Prince Charming. At the end of their dinner, Paul tried to unobtrusively take a picture of the trio, but somehow his iPhone had run out of batteries. Damn.

 

After his shift ended at 2 in the morning, Paul groggily stumbled into his three-bedroom row house.

 

“We saved some turkey for you,” his sister Rachel said. He nearly tripped over her Black Friday haul on his way to the kitchen.

 

“What the hell, Rachel,” Paul grumbled. He paused a second. There was something that he’d wanted to tell Rachel. Something about Wayne … a girl … what was it? But then the thought melted away as if it had never existed.

 

“Something up?” Rachel yawned.

 

“Nothing,” Paul said, finishing up the last bits of turkey. “Is there any pie left?”

 

 


End file.
